


The Forgotten Demon

by Shippers_Roost



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-26 00:07:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16670998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shippers_Roost/pseuds/Shippers_Roost
Summary: A late-night encounter leaves Jack with more questions than ever. If angels can be bad, could a demon ever be good? And who is this Meg that Castiel speaks of so reverently?





	The Forgotten Demon

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Megstiel Bigbang 2018  
> Art by dmsilvisart

[](https://imgur.com/xxdwJ7F)

Jack paced the long hallways of the bunker, the only sound the occasional squeak of his shoes against the concrete flooring. It was looking to be another in a long stretch of sleepless nights for him. Ever since he and Mary had returned from Apocalypse World, his powers had been closer to the surface than ever, driving his human needs further and further away. These days, sleep was nothing but a distant memory.

Turning on his heel, Jack abandoned the stretch of hallway for now. He needed a change of scenery, something to distract his mind. He knew from experience that the longer he dwelled on it, the less likely it was that sleep would ever come.

Ducking into the war room, Jack moved to turn the lights on, but hesitated, a brief flicker of light from around the corner catching his eye. He stepped forward, careful not to make a sound. Who was awake this late?  
  
A soft whisper met his ears, it was too quiet for him to catch the words, but Jack still recognized the gravelly voice. Stealth forgotten, he rounded the corner, “Castiel, I didn’t know you were back.”

Castiel half-turned from his chair, looking back over his shoulder at Jack. “Yes, I just returned a few moments ago. Are you having difficulty sleeping again?”

Jack nodded, stepping further into the room. Closer now, he could see the lit candle on the table besides Castiel, the source of the flickering light that had caught his attention. Beside it sat a bottle of whiskey and one of the crystal glasses that Dean liked to use. “I can’t sleep.” He tapped two fingers on his temple. “There’s just too much going on.”

Castiel frowned. “I’m sorry to hear that, but I can’t say that I’m surprised. You’ve moved much closer to your angelic side in recent months, and you’ve spent a great deal of time learning to use your grace. Your humanity has waned.”  
  
Jack flinched, looking down at his hands, painfully aware of the grace that hummed beneath his skin, the impossible amount of power he was only just learning how to control. Despite his best efforts, Dean was right: there was too much of Lucifer in him.  
  
“I am certain that you will find a balance again,” Castiel said. “You are still half-human, and you still have human needs, even if they are currently suppressed by your grace.”  
  
He sighed heavily, looking down at the table. “I envy you you know. To be able to eat, and sleep. It’s something I miss from being human.”

  
“I like sleep,” Jack said quietly. “When I can’t, the days drag on, and everything blurs together. Sleep helps me keep the days separate.”

“I suppose it does,” Castiel agreed. He brought the crystal glass to his lips and took a sip.  
  
“Who were you talking to?” Jack asked. “When I came downstairs, it sounded like there was someone else here.”  
  
Castiel’s eyes flicked back over to the candle’s dancing flame. He was silent for several seconds, and Jack wondered if he had overstepped his bounds.  
  
“Her name was Meg.” Castiel said at last, meeting Jack’s gaze again. “She was a friend that I lost many years ago. Tonight is the anniversary of her death.”  
  
“Meg?” Jack repeated. “I don’t think Sam or Dean have ever mentioned her to me. Did they ever meet?”  
  
Castiel barked out a laugh, but it sounded wrong, tinged with bitterness and regret. “No, I suppose they wouldn’t have. Sam and Dean certainly knew her, but they didn’t exactly have an amicable relationship.”  
  
Jack hesitated. He had never seen Castiel like this before, but he wanted to help. “Would you like to talk about her?”  
  
The words slipped out before he had a chance to think. Maybe it was intruding, but Castiel was clearly hurting, and he wanted to help. The angel had done so much for Jack already.  
  
“You should sit down,” Castiel said at last, nodding toward the chair beside him. “It’s a long story.”  
  
Jack complied, smoothly dropping into the proffered seat. Standing for extended periods didn’t bother him, Castiel knew that. He was more troubled than Jack had realized—whoever this Meg had been, her loss was weighing heavily on him.

Castiel refilled his glass from the bottle of whiskey before holding it out in offering. “Did you want any?”  
[](https://imgur.com/WJilSid)  
Jack shook his head, eyes locked onto Castiel.  
  
Bringing the glass to his lips once more, Castiel took a long drink, before finally starting to speak. “Meg was a demon, unlike any other I had encountered in the billions of years before I met her. She was exceedingly brave, remarkably cunning, and loyal to a fault. Meg lived by a simple code: you find your cause and you serve it. And for the vast majority of her existence, that cause was freeing Lucifer from his cage and starting the Apocalypse.”

Jack’s face hardened at the mention of Lucifer, but his mind was struggling to comprehend everything that Castiel was saying. Meg was a demon? He had been certain that she was a hunter, or perhaps an angel. He knew that Castiel had worked with demons in the past, but befriending one?

“Meg wasn’t her true name of course, but the first time she encountered the Winchesters, she was possessing a woman named Meg Masters, and she kept that name for herself for the rest of her life. To me, she was always Meg.”  
  
“She fought Sam and Dean?”  
  
“And their father,” Castiel said, taking another drink of his whiskey. “This was before I Fell, but as I understand, she was instrumental in Azazel’s plans for opening the Gates of Hell, and managed to possess Sam for a time.”  
  
Jack frowned. Castiel didn’t seem to mind that Meg had possessed Sam or helped a Prince of Hell. In fact, there was a strange note of pride in his voice. What kind of hold did this demon have on Castiel, even so long after her death?

“After Dean and Bobby exorcised her from Sam’s body, Meg was banished to Hell, and she didn’t return to Earth until the Apocalypse was already well underway.” Castiel said. “She helped another demon possess Bobby, in an attempt to trap Sam and bring him before Lucifer, but as you know, he was able to overcome the possession and destroy the demon.”  
  
“I don’t understand how you two were ever friends,” Jack said. “From what you said, she was a monster. She possessed Sam! She worked with Lucifer!”  
  
“She did.” Castiel agreed. “She had been deceived. Demons revere Lucifer as their God. He created them, and most of Hell willingly followed him, both during the Apocalypse, and again when he was freed a few years ago. Meg supported him in much the same way I did Heaven. We were both fooled by our leaders.”  
  
Castiel’s eyes narrowed, and the full weight of his gaze fell on Jack. “Don’t forget, I worked with Crowley for a time, and I released Lucifer to try and fight the Darkness. Would you be so quick to condemn me as well?”

“Well...no,” Jack said, “But that’s different.”

“Is it? We were both serving a cause that we thought was just. And I assure you, the damage Meg caused on Earth was nothing compared to the carnage I wrought upon Heaven.”  
  
Jack hesitated. Castiel had done some terrible things when he had tried to become God, but he had been trying to do good. He had been trying to help people.

“Meg did many truly heinous things,” Castiel said, his voice softer now. “Some I know of, and I am sure that there are countless more that I don’t. I don’t condone her actions, and I don’t intend for you to view her as an innocent puppet of Lucifer’s. She reveled in the damage she caused, and many of her actions could be seen as unforgivable. But in the end, she gave her life to save Sam and Dean, and even if she wasn’t remorseful for everything she had done, she was fighting to make the world a better place.”

“But why?” He couldn’t understand what would make a demon want to do good. Even Dean had abandoned his morals and succumbed to his baser nature when he was a demon. What made this woman so special?

Castiel smiled, an almost whimsical look in his eyes as he fiddled with the crystal glass in his hand. “I have my suspicions. She didn’t turn away from her God on a whim, it was a gradual process, over the course of many years away from Lucifer. And even then, I’m sure he still held some sway over her until the end.”

There was a long pause as Castiel drank deeply from his glass and filled it again. Jack was acutely aware of every second that passed, marked only by the flickering light of candle and the soft hum of the Bunker’s air pumps.

“Meg’s actions during the Apocalypse only added to the enmity between her and the Winchesters,” Castiel said at last. “Sam and Dean can’t help but blame her for the deaths of their friends, but she was a soldier on the other side of the war. She was fighting for a cause that she believed in, not deliberately targeting them.”

There was an edge to Castiel’s voice: a sense of bitterness, and maybe a touch of anger. Clearly this was a sore subject for him.

“It was during one of our first major battles against Lucifer that I met Meg.” Castiel continued, his tone softening. “We were trying to stop him from freeing Death, the final horseman. At the time, we thought it was our best chance to kill him, back before we realized just how difficult it is to kill an archangel.”

Jack’s stomach twisted at the thought. If they had been successful, they would have prevented the deaths of countless humans and angels, and Lucifer wouldn’t be free today. So much death could have been prevented if that day had gone differently.

“Lucifer had me trapped in holy oil,” Castiel said. His eyes bored into the flickering flame of his candle, the weak light casting dark shadows over his face. “I was completely at his mercy. But he left me behind, trapped in a ring of holy fire and watched over by one of his lieutenants.”

“Meg.”

Castiel nodded slowly. “Yes. It was the first time we had met, although I had heard Sam and Dean mention her previously. Our kind were sworn enemies, and we stood on opposite sides of the battlefield, but still, something about her was intriguing, even then.”

“Because she was a demon?”

Castiel’s lips quirked into a slight smile. “No, but that didn’t hurt either. Looking back now, I think it was watching her interact with Lucifer that helped me see something of myself in her. The way she hung on to his every word, and tried so hard to please him. In a way, it was reminiscent of angels in Heaven, and how they—how _we_ sought to please an absent father.”

Jack shook his head. “I still don’t understand how that could lead to a friendship. She was still working against humanity. You rebelled from Heaven for doing the very same thing, what was different about her?”

“It wasn’t an immediate change,” Castiel said, turning back to meet Jack’s gaze once more. “But I won’t deny that she had an impact on me. Every other demon I had encountered seemed to be nothing more than a twisted and mutilated human soul, seeking nothing but pain and destruction and personal gain. They would turn on one another as easily as they did their enemies, abandoning their allies the moment it served their own purposes.”

Castiel paused to take another drink, and Jack mulled over the angel’s words. There was some truth to them, the few demons he had encountered seemed to fit the criteria that Castiel described; they operated on little more than instinct, cowed into following orders only when they feared for their own lives or stood to gain from it.

“Meg was different,” Castiel said. “She was clever and brave, and had so many qualities that I didn’t think demons were capable of. After I escaped the holy fire and left her behind, I found my thoughts turning to her quite often in the years that followed. I judged my fellow angels for thinking that we were better than the humans we were supposed to guard. And yet wasn’t that exactly how I treated demons? It was something that continued to trouble me the more I thought about it.”

Jack hesitated. He was suddenly aware of exactly where this story was leading. He knew what Castiel had done after the Apocalypse, and he suddenly regretted encouraging him to reminiscence when he was already at a low point.

“Then came Heaven’s civil war.”

Castiel’s voice had gone cold, the life drained from his face. Jack wanted to tell him to stop, but something made him hold his tongue. This was something that Castiel needed. After everything the angel had done for him, listening was the least that Jack could do.

“I couldn’t even begin to explain what it was like,” Castiel said quietly. He was staring into the distance again, no longer seeing the Jack or the bunker. He was lost in memories. “It was brother against brother, sister against sister. Angels that had lived and worked together for millennia were suddenly at war with each other, ready and willing to kill for their cause.”

Castiel shook his head, a dark scowl marring his features. “Heaven had only seen a handful of angels die since the dawn of creation. And suddenly we were losing dozens a week, and neither side was willing to back down. We were driving ourselves to extinction.”

Pain and anguish laced every word he spoke. The angels had never been anything but an enemy to Jack, but to Castiel, they had been family. Jack couldn’t begin to imagine the suffering that he had witnessed, how much guilt he still carried from his role in the war. Even now, those deaths weighed heavily on him.

“I...I wasn’t in the best place when Crowley approached me.” Castiel said. “The civil war had already begun to take its toll, and my judgement—particularly where the Winchesters were concerned—was clouded. I was easily manipulated.”  
  
He shook his head bitterly. “I was so confident, so sure of myself. I knew that Crowley was using me, but I thought that I could use him instead, that we could both solidify our power bases if we worked together. And I couldn’t shake the thoughts of Meg. If she could be so much more than I had assumed, maybe Crowley could too. I was a fool.”  
  
“No, you weren’t.”  
  
Jack hesitated, he hadn’t meant to speak. He was trying to support Castiel, not talk over him. But when he saw the angel’s eyes flick over to him, the barest gleam of hope flickering in their depths, he pressed on. “You weren’t a fool. You were trying to do what you thought was right. What you thought the world needed.”  
  
“Hubris.” Castiel said, the spark in his eyes dying as he dismissed Jack’s claim. “A flaw that many angels shared. I thought that I could work with Crowley, that between us we could forge a peace between Heaven and Hell. His plan was desperate yes, but there was a slim chance that it would work.  
  
“Meg reappeared in the middle of all that chaos. The Winchesters were being coerced to work for Crowley, and she had somehow caught wind of it. Meg wanted Crowley dead, and she knew that they could lead her right to him. It would have worked, except that they made a mistake. They trusted me too much.”  
  
Castiel’s pain was almost palpable, and for a moment, Jack wanted to reach out to him, to try and soothe some of his agony. This was a burden that the angel had held for years, one of the mistakes he had never forgiven himself for.

“I betrayed them.” Castiel croaked, his voice barely above a whisper. “Meg’s presence would have caught him off guard, and they would have succeeded. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“You told Crowley they were coming. You gave him time to set a trap.”  
  
Castiel nodded shakily. “Yes. Hellhounds to be specific. Meg was the only one that could see or fight them, and she was trapped in her vessel. I was intending to leave her behind and get the Winchesters out, convincing them that we had missed our opportunity.  
  
“Meg had other plans. She took my angel blade, and told us to leave. She knew that she couldn’t kill all of the hellhounds, but she could hold them off, buy the rest of us time to get to Crowley and kill him. She thought that it would mean her death, but she didn’t care, as long as we made sure Crowley died too. I wouldn’t call it selfless, but it was yet another hint that there was more to her than I had seen, more than she wanted _anyone_ to see.”  
  
Jack sat back, trying to process everything Castiel had told him: Meg certainly didn’t sound like any demon he had ever met. For the most part, they seemed little more than an extension of Asmodeus’ will, following his orders without a second thought. But Meg was independent, she took up arms against the King of Hell for her personal reasons, with no regard for his position. Vengeance was a trait that many demons shared, but something seemed different about her, Jack didn’t think that many other demons would have been willing to partner with an angel and two hunters, especially in the wake of the Apocalypse.  
  
“Why did you give her your blade?” Jack asked. “You were surrounded by demons and in the midst of a civil war in Heaven. Why give up one of your only weapons?”  
  
“You make it sound like I had a choice in the matter,” Castiel said, and for a moment, his voice regained its strength, and an almost whimsical smile crossed his face. “Meg...well let’s just say that she managed to distract all three of us long enough to snatch my angel blade from my sleeve.”  
  
Castiel fidgeted awkwardly in his chair, before reaching out and filling his drink once more. He brought the crystal to his lips and drank, while Jack mused on what the angel had told him. He suspected there was more to the story, but didn’t press.  
  
“You know the gist of what happened after,” Castiel said at last, setting his drink aside for the moment. “I betrayed the Winchesters, and broke down the wall that Death had put in Sam’s mind, protecting him from his memories of the Cage. I opened the gates of Purgatory, swallowed up every soul inside, killed Raphael, and then returned to Heaven where I declared myself God. I butchered thousands of angels, forced the rest to bow to me, and served as little more than a dictator for the months that followed.”  
  
“You gave them up,” Jack said quietly. “When you realized what you had become, you gave up the souls and returned them to Purgatory.”  
  
“I tried.” Castiel’s words dripped with shame and self-loathing, strong enough to make Jack shudder under the weight of it. “It was too late. I had unleashed the Leviathans on the world, and they took my life in penance. It is my greatest regret, even more so than when I helped Metatron cast the angels down from Heaven, or freed Lucifer from the Cage. If not for my actions that night, the Leviathans would never have walked free, the Word of God would never have been uncovered, and all of our actions to close the gates of Heaven and Hell would never have come to pass.”  
  
Jack swallowed hard, trying not to look at the tattered scraps of Castiel’s wings as he tucked his own tighter against his back, not wanting to draw any attention to them. He and Lucifer had the only intact sets of wings left on the planet, and Jack knew just how much the loss of their wings had affected the angels. They had sided with Lucifer in part due to their dwindling numbers and desperate need for more angels, but also because he had promised to restore their wings. It was a point of shame for all angels, and he knew that Castiel still held himself responsible for the Fall.  
  
“Our father brought me back,” Castiel said softly, drawing Jack’s attention again. “Despite everything I had done, he brought me back. Even now, I don’t know why he wouldn’t allow me to die, to remain in the Empty until the end of time, wallowing in my shame and regrets. It would have been no less than I deserved.”  
  
Jack bit his tongue to keep from interrupting. He hated seeing Castiel like this, so wrapped up in his guilt, but he sensed that this was something the angel needed, another form of the penance that he seemed to crave. Not for the first time, Jack wondered how long it had been since Castiel had spoken of these events, if he ever had.  
  
“My resurrection was different that time.” Castiel continued. “I was brought back without any of my memories, although my grace was still intact. From what I learned in the Empty, I suspect that he had only moments to resurrect me before I was out of his reach, but wanted to keep me out of the fight.”

  
Castiel laughed mirthlessly, an oddly cold sound coming from him. “Or maybe fallen angels were in short supply and he needed to keep me at hand so that we could kill the Leviathans. It’s hard to know what he is thinking, or what he wants people to do.”  
  
Jack agreed, but didn’t say anything. He always felt awkward when someone else brought up Chuck. It was almost impossible for him to wrap his mind around a being powerful enough to create _everything,_ and yet still managed to make so many mistakes. And Jack was somehow his grandson?  
  
“After my resurrection, it was months before I saw any sign of the supernatural.” Castiel said, eyes falling back to stare into the depths of his glass. “Daphne, the woman who found me, she spent most of that time caring for me. Even without my memories, there was some kind of dark cloud that hung over me, as if I knew even then what I had done. Eventually, we learned that I had healing powers—my grace, although we didn’t know it at the time—and Daphne encouraged me to use it to help people and do good in the world.”  
  
He shook his head, smiling softly down at the glass in his hand. “She couldn’t have known it, but Daphne was exactly what I needed. I think if I hadn’t had that time to heal, if she hadn’t proven to me that I could still do good—I think that regaining my memory would have been too much. The guilt and shame would have overwhelmed me, even more than it already did.”

Jack nodded slowly. “I know what you mean. After Tombstone—” He swallowed the lump that had suddenly appeared in his throat, visions of the dead guard dancing behind his eyes. He wasn’t the only man Jack had killed, but he was the first. And the only one that had been innocent. “After Tombstone, I needed to prove to myself that I wasn’t all bad. That I could help people instead of hurting them. You needed the same thing.”  
  
Castiel murmured his agreement, fingers tightening around his crystal glass. “I did. Somehow Dean heard rumors of a particularly powerful faith healer and sought me out, hoping that I could help heal Sam—after I broke the wall in his mind, he was continuously assaulted by his memories of the cage, and after months of living with them, he was barely clinging to sanity. I did that to him. I broke the wall, and I put him in that position. And even after all of that, I’m not too proud to admit that if I’d had all of my memories when Dean showed up on my doorstep, I would have vanished rather than face him and admit my sins.”  
  
Jack could relate to that too. His wings twitched unconsciously, longing to be free. To run away from all of his problems and never stop. He had done that for a time too, after Tombstone. But it hadn’t worked. He could never quite fly fast enough to escape his thoughts or his memories. All he could do was try to be better.

“We were pursued of course. A relatively unknown faith healer suddenly killing a demon will tend to draw some attention.” Castiel said. “There aren’t many humans that can take a demon on directly. At least one demon caught up to us when we stopped to refuel. He nearly killed Dean, but we were lucky. Meg was there, and she saved him.”  
  
“How did she find you? Didn’t she think you were dead?”  
  
“She did,” Castiel said softly. “She was after Emmanuel, the faith healer I purported to be. She was on the run from Crowley and somehow thought that I would be the edge she needed, even without knowing who I really was. She was too late to intercept me before Dean did, but she followed us, biding her time until the exact right moment to reveal herself and buy our protection, at least for a time.”

Jack let out a breath. “She really did have plans for every contingency, didn’t she?”  
  
Castiel chuckled. “No, not quite. But she was extraordinarily good at thinking on her feet. Most demons would have outright refused to consider partnering with hunters, even those that weren’t in Crowley’s good graces. Meg didn’t hesitate because she knew that it would help her survive. She was remarkably pragmatic in that respect.”

“What happened next?”  
  
“We arrived at the hospital to find that it was surrounded by demons. Dean was armed only with the knife, and while Meg was a more-than-capable fighter, she couldn’t take on more than a single demon or two on her own, especially without any kind of lethal weapon.”  
  
“And you didn’t remember how to smite demons.”  
  
Castiel’s head dipped into a short nod. “Correct. Dean had been hesitant to reveal my true nature to me up to that point. He didn’t want to take the chance that I would regain my memories and disappear. He wasn’t wrong. Even after I had smote the demons, and my memories returned, my first instinct was to flee. I had caused so much devastation, and death was to be my penance. I didn’t deserve to be alive.”  
  
Again, Jack held his tongue, even though his every instinct was urging him to try and comfort Castiel. He couldn’t interrupt, not just yet. This was what Castiel needed, a chance to unburden himself of years of silence and self-loathing. Jack wouldn’t take that away from him.  
  
“You know at least some of what happened next,” Castiel said. “I couldn’t heal Sam, his mind was far too damaged for that. The best I could do was transfer his hallucinations to myself, to take on his insanity and allow him to walk free. And so, I did.  
  


“The Winchesters left soon after that. They couldn’t stay in one place for too long, not with the Leviathans and Crowley after them. It was Meg of all people that volunteered to stay with me while I was unconscious, disguising herself as a nurse and taking a job at the hospital to watch over me as best she could.”

This was one part of the story that Jack had never heard. Every time he had heard the Winchesters speak of their fight against the Leviathans, he had just assumed that they were the ones to stay with Castiel, or that the addled angel had gone into hiding with them. Meg had never even been mentioned.

“I—I don’t remember a lot of that time,” Castiel admitted. “Taking on Sam’s hallucinations was more than I had anticipated. To this day, I’m not sure how he lasted as long as he did. I was overcome by them, and I was a fully-powered angel. Any ordinary human would have been catatonic within hours, if not minutes.”  
  
“Sam and Dean are anything but ordinary.”  
  
“Indeed,” Castiel agreed, sipping at his drink once more. “I had imagined that I would be able to resist better than he could, but I was wrong. Hubris, always my fatal flaw, had struck again. I slipped into unconsciousness, and weeks passed before I stirred.”  
  
Castiel shook his head again, as if chasing away some errant thought. “Meg was my caretaker for all of that time. I don’t know all of the details from those days, but even when I was at my most vulnerable, when it appeared likely that I would never again be of use to her, she stayed.”  
  
“Why?”  
  


“I don’t know.”

Castiel was silent for a long moment, and Jack feared that he had crossed some sort of invisible line, but finally the angel spoke again. “Loyalty was always very important to Meg. She had told the Winchesters she would stay, so maybe she decided to stick it out, even when I was at my worst.”  
  
Somehow, Jack doubted that was the case. Loyal or not, Meg had proven to be plenty self-serving when necessary. He was certain that she would have fled if she wanted to. Something must have kept her there, kept her by Castiel’s side. He just didn’t know what it was.

“I didn’t wake until Sam and Dean uncovered the Word of God.” Castiel said swiftly, not allowing Jack to inquire any further on the matter. “I wasn’t healed yet, not fully, but I was conscious. Meg tried to convince me that she didn’t need to call the Winchesters yet, but I insisted. I knew that the burst of cosmic energy that had woken me would have been felt in Heaven and Hell, and we needed to move.”

“You weren’t healed?” That just didn’t make any sense. Angels healed incredibly quickly, and this had been before the Fall, while Castiel’s grace was still whole. The damage from the Leviathans and Sam’s Hell trauma must have gone even deeper than Jack had imagined.

“Not quite.” Castiel said. “I was physically healed, but something had broken in my mind. I wasn’t all there. I struggled to focus for long periods of time, my mind would wander aimlessly, and I couldn’t handle conflict. Not that I didn’t like it, or wanted to avoid it, but I physically couldn’t handle it. As soon as people started to argue or fight, I would leave. It wasn’t a conscious decision, not really. Things just started happening around me when I got stressed. I was like a fledgling angel, newly come into his powers.”

Jack nodded. He could relate. His first few months of life had been similar, unable to control his powers, unable to do _anything_ right. Bad things just kept happening. But he hadn’t known any different. It must have been so much worse for Castiel, to have lost the control that he held for millennia, Jack couldn’t even imagine what it must have felt like.

“I wasn’t the only angel to be alerted to the Word, and it wasn’t long before two members of my old garrison descended upon us. Dean, being the fighter that he is, blasted us all away with a blood sigil.” Castiel said. “After I recovered from the banishment, I took off, just touring the world. I hated to leave my friends behind, but I knew that they were going to fight again, and I couldn’t be around them. I ended up in Perth for a time, watching the dogs run. The dogs weren’t happy in their role, but they kept at it, running in oval after oval, chasing after a fake rabbit. In a way, it was the perfect metaphor for my life up until that point.”  
  
Jack was thoroughly bewildered by Castiel’s rambling explanation, but kept his mouth shut, not wanting to interrupt the angel again.  
  
“For thousands of years, I had been aimlessly chasing the rabbit. I followed my father’s orders, and I ran around the track without ever being allowed to do anything else. And when I was finally able to free myself, I did nothing but cause more pain to those around me. I spent longer than I’d care to recall at that track, watching the dogs and thinking about the banality of existence. At that point, it seemed that the only good thing I had left was Meg. Yes, she was a demon. But she wasn’t trying to drag me back into the fight like Sam and Dean, she had watched over me for weeks, and even though this new Cas wasn’t the one that she was expecting, she was content to let me be who I needed to be. So, I called her.”

Castiel knocked back the last of his drink, and reached for the bottle again, promptly refilling his glass. “I wasn’t sure what to expect when I called. I had a half-thought that she would have fled after angels appeared at the hospital, but in hindsight, that was severely underestimating her. Meg was many things, but she wasn’t stupid, and she was never a coward. Inias and Hester would have hunted her to the ends of the Earth, and traveling with the Winchesters gave her some much needed backup.”  
  
Once again, Jack found himself reevaluating his opinion of Meg. Even after everything that Castiel had said, he would have expected her to take off as soon as the angels descended. Only the most powerful demons could stand up to an angel alone, and Meg didn’t seem the type to get dragged into a fight she couldn’t win.

“It was strange, I didn’t realize it at the time, but Meg never asked me to join her. She just told me where she was, and I flew there without even thinking.” Castiel’s voice was softer now, so low that Jack wasn’t sure a human would have been able to hear him.  
  


“Why? You said yourself that you couldn’t handle conflict,” Jack said. “You knew Meg would be in the thick of things, that going back to see her would be reinserting yourself in the fight. Why would you return?”  
  
“Isn’t it obvious?” Castiel asked.  
  
Jack hesitated, trying to see the logic jump that he had apparently missed, but finally shook his head. He couldn’t understand Castiel’s reasoning, it wasn’t out of some sense of duty, because he hadn’t known she was with Sam and Dean. What else could be strong enough to drag him back into the fight?  
  
“I loved her.”  
  
Jack stiffened, everything suddenly clicking as the last piece fell into place.

“I don’t know for sure when it happened,” Castiel said. “From the moment I woke up in that hospital, I knew that she was someone special to me, someone who had gone out of her way to help me at a time where it seemed I would never be able to repay the favor. With my mind still somewhat addled, I saw her as something more than just her demonic nature. I saw Meg as she truly was, fire and brimstone yes, but also clever, loyal, and courageous. There had always been chemistry between us, even from our first encounter in the holy fire, but time and proximity had developed that into something more, something stronger than I would have ever guessed an angel could feel for a demon.”  
  
There was a certain reverence in Castiel’s voice as he spoke of Meg, and again Jack wondered how he had failed to pick up on it before. His very essence screamed his love for her. He had to have been blind to have missed it.

“Despite my many attempts to ingratiate myself to her, Meg was steadfast in her refusals. I didn’t realize it at the time, but she was trying to distance herself from me while I was still incapacitated. She didn’t want anything to happen until I was sure of who and what I was. Every other demon I’ve met would have leapt on the opportunity to have an angel under their thumb. But not Meg. She wanted to make sure I was of sound mind before allowing anything to develop.”  
  
“She loved you too.” Jack murmured, finally understanding. That was why Meg had chosen to care for Castiel, why she had stayed with him long after almost anyone else would have turned their backs on him. She loved him. “She didn’t want to open herself to the risk of losing you until she knew for sure that you weren’t going to turn on her when you were feeling better. Better to hide her feelings, squash them down so that she couldn’t get hurt, at least for a time.”  
  
He wasn’t sure where the words had come from—he had never been interested in anyone in that way, and he certainly had no first-hand knowledge of what Meg had been feeling, but somehow he knew that he was right.

“Looking back, that would be my guess as well.” Castiel agreed, not quite managing to fully conceal the pain in his eyes. “But at the time, I wasn’t in any position to understand her reasoning. All I knew is that she was the only one not trying to make me fight. And I wasn’t ready to give that up. So, when she left the next night, I went with her. She was content to let me watch the bees and the insects while she did—well I’ll be honest, I don’t know what she did most of the time. But it worked for us. Eventually, I decided that we needed to go back. Not to fight, but to make sure that Sam and Dean were ready for their battle against Dick Roman. Meg encouraged the decision, although she never went as far as to tell me that I had to go.”  
  
“But you did fight, didn’t you?”  
  
“I did.” Castiel was silent for a long moment, and then. “I wanted nothing more than to stay out of the fight forever. But that wasn’t my role to play. Someone had to identify the real Dick Roman out of all of the Leviathans, and I was the only one that could do it. If I hadn’t at least helped, everybody would have perished, and the world would have succumbed to the Leviathans’ rule.”

Castiel closed his eyes, anguish scrawled across his features. “And because of that decision, I wasn’t there to protect Meg when Crowley’s demons struck. They captured her and tortured her for over a year. And the worst part was that I didn’t even know.”  
  
A harsh shudder wracked Castiel’s frame, and Jack realized just how close the angel was to breaking. The words came faster now, thick with grief and hard to decipher. “Dean and I were already in Purgatory when they came. Crowley captured both Meg and Kevin, and I had no idea. When I returned from Purgatory, I was caught up in Naomi’s machinations and she somehow suppressed my feelings for Meg. I knew who she was of course, but until I saw her again, I had forgotten just how much she meant to me.”  
  
Jack tensed at the mere mention of Naomi’s name. Her ability to control angels was one of his biggest fears. The very idea that she would be able to take of his mind and bend his power to her will had haunted Jack’s nightmares from the first time he had heard of her.  
  
“Naomi ordered me to kill her, but I managed to persuade her that Meg could be of use to us. It was one of the few times I managed to even partially resist her control. If it wasn’t for Meg, I may not have ever been free from her.” Castiel choked out, the words hardly audible. Even with Jack’s angelic hearing, he had to lean in closer to catch every word. “Even in her final day, Meg was still helping me.”  
  
Castiel stopped, taking several deep breaths and draining the last of his drink to regain his composure. When he spoke again, it was still hardly above a whisper, but his voice was more controlled. “After I freed her, one of the first things she asked was if I had recovered from taking on Sam’s trauma.”

He shook his head, a bitter, mocking scowl marring his face. “A year of torture at the hands of the King of Hell, and she was worried about how I was doing. That was who Meg was in the end. Not a monster, not evil. But concerned for the well-being of her friend. I decided then and there that after I was done with my mission, I was going to leave with Meg and make sure she knew how I felt about her. Naomi would never have allowed it, but I would have sacrificed everything to try.”  
  
Jack didn’t want Castiel to continue any longer. He knew that this story was only going to have a tragic ending. But, he didn’t have any choice but to bite his tongue. Castiel needed him, and listening was the very least that he could do in return.

“That was Meg’s last night on Earth. She held off Crowley while Sam and Dean escaped and I fled with the Angel Tablet. She knew that she wasn’t a match for him on her best day, much less after her prolonged captivity. But she didn’t care. Her last act was sacrificing herself so that Sam and Dean could save the world.”  
  
There was the soft crunch of crystal as Castiel’s hand clenched around his forgotten glass, shattering it. He didn’t even seem to notice as shards of crystal showered over his lap and the table, and he made no effort to heal the deep scratches across his fingers and palm. “I wasn’t there for her! Once again, I left her unprotected and she paid the ultimate price for it. After everything I did, after all of the mistakes I made, I couldn’t save the one person I cared most about in the world.”

With a sudden, ferocious sweep of his arm, Castiel knocked the bottle of whiskey off the table, letting it smash on the floor. "I didn’t even learn about her death for months! For months, Meg slept in the Empty, having given her life to save ours, and I didn’t even question it. I can’t even blame Naomi for it, because she couldn’t control me any longer. I just didn’t look for her. I assumed she had struck out on her own again, and would show up when she was ready, just like she always had.”  
  
For a long moment, the room was quiet, save for the distant humming of the air pumps and the steady dripping of whiskey onto the ground. “I found out she was dead after the Fall, when I was human for the first time. Dean had kicked me out of the bunker and I had nowhere to go. I turned to the only friend I had that had never betrayed me, and I tried to summon Meg. I tried three times, but in my heart, I already knew the truth. She was dead and gone, and it was my fault.”

Jack’s hands clenched into fists below the table. He had wanted so badly to help Castiel, but all he had done was cause the angel more pain. He could never do anything right, not even something as simple as this.  
  
“Did I tell you that she called me Clarence?”  
  
The question caught Jack off-guard. Castiel sounded almost normal when he asked, as if he hadn’t been in the middle of a breakdown just moments before. “No, like from the movie?”

“Yes, exactly.” Castiel smiled weakly, and looked down at his hands, seemingly just noticing the wounds he had caused. “I never understood the reference, but she almost never called me by my name. I don’t know why she called me that, but when I was human, I borrowed the name. It helped me feel closer to her.”  
  
There was a soft glow as Castiel finally healed his scratched hands. “In all of my years of existence, Meg was the only being I have ever loved in a romantic way. Sam, Dean, you—you’re all my family, and I would die for any one of you. I have several times over. But Meg was unique.”  
  
Castiel looked up, his face lined with shadows cast by the dying flame of the candle. “Thank you for sitting with me tonight, and for listening. It’s been a long time since I spoke of her.” He gestured to the mess he had made, shards of crystal and glass lying in a pool of whiskey. “Too long I suppose.”  
  
“No, thank you. For telling me. She was such an important part of your life, but I never even knew her name before tonight. I’m sorry that you feel like you can’t talk about her with anyone.”  
  
Castiel gave a long-suffering sigh and rubbed his jaw with one hand. “The Winchesters...well they weren’t exactly her biggest fans, for obvious reasons. Meg caused them a lot of pain over the years, and it’s not surprising that they hold a grudge.”  
  
Jack frowned. “But still, you should be able to discuss this. Do they know how you felt about her?”  
  
“Sam does, or at least most of it. Before she died, Meg confessed her feelings to him. It had slipped his mind between the Trials and the Fall and everything else, but he told me eventually. Dean? I’m not sure, but I doubt it. I don’t know that he would understand, and at this point, I’m not going to bring it up.”  
  
“Well, if you ever want to talk about her, or anything at all, I’m happy to listen.” Jack offered. “I know it’s not the same, but—”  
  
“Don’t sell yourself short,” Castiel interrupted. “Tonight helped, more than you can know. Thank you Jack. And if in the future you would like me to tell you about Kelly, know that I would love to. She was an amazing woman in her own right, and you’re more like her than you realize.”  
  
Now it was Jack’s turn to avert his gaze, blinking away the tears that stung his eyes. Quite apart from being the closest thing he had to a father, Castiel was the only one that had really known his mother. Coming from him, that carried far more weight than he could ever imagine.  
  
“Thank you.” It was all Jack could manage to say, but he tried to imbue the words with every ounce of gratitude that he could.  
  
Castiel seemed to understand, because he rose from his chair, and dusted the shard of crystal from his clothes. “Just let me know when you’re ready.” He nodded towards the drying puddle of whiskey on the ground. “I’ll get a mop, I need to clean that up before the others wake.”  
  


Once he was sure that Castiel was out of earshot, Jack closed his eyes. The angel had done so much for him, and there was only one thing that he could offer in return. Reaching inwardly to the source of his power, Jack let it swell up and fill his body, gathering every drop of strength he could muster. He had done this only once before, and even then, only on accident, but he would give anything to replicate the feat now. He wanted to help Castiel; the angel that had given him everything—his father.  
  
His body tingling with the raw power that thrummed just below his skin, Jack opened his eyes, seeing the dark room through a haze of golden grace. “ _Meg_.”

[](https://imgur.com/B0uHbGP)

[](https://imgur.com/xNjBbQq)


End file.
